Sermon for July 4th, 2021
This is my home, the country where my heart is
By The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer -
As some of you know, Scouting was a big part of my life from grade school through college. I was an Eagle Scout and got to give the Boy Scout’s “Report to the Nation” to President Johnson in 1967. I even have an American Indian name given to me when I was chosen for the Vigil honor in Scouting’s Order of the Arrow. Scouting took me many wonderful places and was an important part of my childhood and young adulthood.
Through many of those years I attended and then was part of the summer camp staff at the Shikellamy Scout Reservation near Bethel, Pennsylvania later called the Hawk Mountain Scout Reservation. I was a camper, a counselor-in-training, the nature director, the assistant chaplain, the chaplain and finally, in the year after Kris and I were married, the camp director.
After all these years, I am pretty much still a Boy Scout at heart – love of God, love of country, fairness and honesty, care for the environment, “to help other people at all times” – all Scouting virtues that are still with me today. And I still always want to leave my “campsite” better than I found it!
Through many of those Boy Scout camp summers I hosted the weekly Friday evening campfire for parents and families of the Scouts who had been with us the past week. And for most of those campfires I led the song with which we always finished our campfires:
God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above. From the mountains to the prairies, the oceans white with foam, God bless America, my home sweet home. God bless America, my home sweet home!
And I know many of you were singing along, at least in your head, as I shared this song.
45 years ago, on this day and this Sunday, I was preaching for only the second or third time in my first congregation, Holy Trinity Memorial Lutheran Church in Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. That Sunday was Bicentennial Sunday, July 4, 1976, the 200th anniversary of the founding of the United States in America. A member of my congregation, Roger Williams, was heading up the Catasauqua J4 celebration so we were all heavily involved in celebrating the bicentennial of our nation over that three-day weekend.
I do not remember much about that sermon except that I held up the flag and the cross and reminded the congregation that our duty to God always comes ahead of our duty to country.
I still love this nation as much or more than I did those many Boy Scout years ago. That feeling has not and will never change. I still believe that our duty to God always comes ahead of our duty to country.
And I have always known that our nation was far from perfect. In recent years, like many other white people, I have learned so much about past and present racism in our country and our often-horrific treatment of non-white people, especially Native peoples and those who were brought here as enslaved people. There was so much that was not taught in history in my public school growing up – the too many massacres of Native people, the horrific lynchings of black people, and much more. I did learn a little about Wounded Knee, but nothing about the Tulsa race massacre and so much more. So much of the troubling past of this country just was not taught to us. We learned little about the evils of racism and white supremacy and our troubled 400+ years of relationships with non-white people. I now believe it is important to study all of our nation’s past, all the good and all the bad and then to learn from our past mistakes, especially when those mistakes have had such terrible effect for hundreds of years on so many in this nation.
I have often said that my attitudes towards non-Christians changed dramatically once I had first-hand experiences with people of other religions. As I have shared with you in the past, I can no longer imagine a heaven without my non-Christian friends.
The same could also be said about my feelings about this nation after my many global travel and service experiences. Once you have travelled, especially when you have seen the plight of people in countries that have been hurt by past and present policies of this nation, you get a different view of this nation. Travel can open your eyes and your heart in new ways.
I still pray for God to bless this nation. And that God will lead this nation to stand for peace and fairness in relationship with all of its citizens and with people other nations.
My feelings are well-summed up by the hymn, This Is My Song, a hymn that I was delighted to find was a favorite of members of Mt. Olive.
This is my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is; here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.
So hear my song, O God of all the nations, a song of peace for their land and for mine.
And that is my wish for the USA, this land that I love. And for all the nations of this world. That we might somehow find a way to sing a song of equal rights for everyone in this nation and a song of peace for all nations of this world.
So hear my prayer, O God of all the nations; myself I give you; let your will be done.
On this 4th of July 2021, it is my prayer that God will bless America, that God will guide our leaders and all of us to strive to be a nation “with liberty and justice for all.” That, I believe, is God’s will, God’s will of love for this nation and the entire world. May that will be done.
Amen.
The Rev. Eric Christopher Shafer
Senior Pastor - Mt. Olive Lutheran Church
Santa Monica, California
Sermon for:
July 4, 2021
